“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” - Albert Einstein

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Bad timing

On the same day that Jeff Emanuel at RedState decides to write a post which uses the story of an Air Force Chief Master Sergeant to show how the media's "continual striving for bloodier, jucier, and more negative headlines and stories from the middle east" overlooks "America's underlying decency," I was sent the video below. In it, American soldiers tempt small Iraqi boys with water, getting them to run (apparently barefoot) after their truck. In the end, the kid who runs the furthest doesn't even get the water and the soldiers laugh and laugh.

If any of the guys I was with in Afghanistan would have done this, I would have knocked the shit out of them. I can't, however, think of one person who would have.

Let's call this Nitpicker Rule #1: No country, party, religion or profession has yet cornered the market on heroes or assholes.

P.S. I wrote this almost exactly nine years ago, for the Kansas State Collegian:

During his failed run at the presidency, Bob Dole was speaking to a veterans' group when he claimed veterans were just a little bit better than other Americans. I was still on board my ship, the USS Abraham Lincoln, at the time and had to laugh, because two days before this statement, our showers had once again been attacked by the "Phantom Shitter."

The P.S. was a guy (as far as we know it was one person) who for some reason found it funny to defecate in our shower stalls. He probably found it a lot funnier because we only had four shower stalls to be shared by 80 people. He would attack maybe once a month, giving almost everyone a chance to witness the spectacle at least once.

2 Comments:

I´m shocked at the images. The abuse of power. I wish I had not seen them. They don´t make me hate America, they make me hate soldiers. And war. And ignorance. And mankind. I hope the soldiers in question live to have children of their own. Maybe then they will fathom what they did on this video and regret it.One can but hope.